Appearing tonight at SciAm.com

Folks, last summer I told you about the very exciting though disturbing development of ST 398 MRSA — the “untypable” Dutch strain that originated in pigs and spread to humans — being found in pigs in the US for the first time.

But here’s the brand-new second half of that story: It was found in pig handlers as well, on a set of linked farms — a closed production system that takes pigs from birth to just before slaughter — in Iowa and Illinois.

The full study has just been published, in the online Public Library of Science journal PLoS One.

And I have a story describing the research and the background — and the alarming spread of ST 398 in Europe — up tonight at ScientificAmerican.com.